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Basque phonology
Vowels The Basque language features five vowels: , , , and (the same that are found in Spanish, Asturian and Aragonese). In the Zuberoan dialect, extra phonemes are featured: * the close front rounded vowel , graphically represented as ; * a set of contrasting nasal vowels, indicating a strong influence from Gascon. Consonants Basque has a distinction between laminal and apical articulation for the alveolar fricatives and affricates. With the laminal alveolar fricative , the friction occurs across the blade of the tongue, the tongue tip pointing toward the lower teeth. This is the usual in most European languages. It is written with an orthographic . By contrast, the voiceless apicoalveolar fricative is written ; the tip of the tongue points toward the upper teeth and friction occurs at the tip (apex). For example, zu "you" (singular, respectful) is distinguished from su "fire". The affricate counterparts are written and . So, etzi "the day after tomorrow" is distinguished from etsi "to give up"; atzo "yesterday" is distinguished from atso "old woman". In the westernmost parts of the Basque country, only the apical and the alveolar affricate are used. Basque also features postalveolar sibilants ( , written , and , written ), sounding like English sh and ch. There are two palatal stops, voiced and unvoiced, as well as a palatal nasal and a palatal lateral (the palatal stops are not present in all dialects). These and the postalveolar sounds are typical of diminutives, which are used frequently in child language and motherese (mainly to show affection rather than size). For example, tanta "drop" vs. ttantta "droplet". A few common words, such as txakur "dog", use palatal sounds even though in current usage they have lost the diminutive sense; the corresponding non-palatal forms now acquiring an augmentative or pejorative sense: zakur—"big dog". Many Basque dialects exhibit a derived palatalisation effect, in which coronal onset consonants change into the palatal counterpart after the high front vowel . For example, the in egin "to act" becomes palatal in southern and western dialects when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added: = "the action", = "doing". The letter has a variety of realisations according to the regional dialect: , as pronounced from west to east in south Bizkaia and coastal Lapurdi, central Bizkaia, east Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, south Navarre, inland Lapurdi and Low Navarre, and Zuberoa, respectively. The letter is silent in the Southern dialects, but pronounced (although vanishing) in the Northern ones. Unified Basque spells it except when it is predictable, in a position following a consonant.Trask, The History of Basque, pp. 157–163. Unless they are recent loanwords (e.g. Ruanda (Rwanda), radar ... ), words may not have initial . In older loans, initial r-'' took a prosthetic ''e-'', resulting in ''err-'' (''Erroma "Rome", Errusia "Russia"), more rarely irr-'' (for example ''irratia "radio", irrisa "rice"). Stress and pitch Basque features great dialectal variation in accentuation, from a weak pitch accent in the western dialects to a marked stress in central and eastern dialects, with varying patterns of stress placement.Hualde, J.I. (1986), "Tone and Stress in Basque: A Preliminary Survey". Anuario del Seminario Julio de Urquijo XX-3, 1986, pp. 867-896. Stress is in general not distinctive (and for historical comparisons not very useful); there are, however, a few instances where stress is phonemic, serving to distinguish between a few pairs of stress-marked words and between some grammatical forms (mainly plurals from other forms), e.g. basóà ("the forest", absolutive case) vs. básoà ("the glass", absolutive case; an adoption from Spanish vaso); basóàk ("the forest", ergative case) vs. básoàk ("the glass", ergative case) vs. básoak ("the forests" or "the glasses", absolutive case). Given its great deal of variation among dialects, stress is not marked in the standard orthography and Euskaltzaindia (the Academy of the Basque Language) provides only general recommendations for a standard placement of stress, basically to place a high-pitched weak stress (weaker than that of Spanish, let alone that of English) on the second syllable of a syntagma, and a low-pitched even-weaker stress on its last syllable, except in plural forms where stress is moved to the first syllable. This scheme provides Basque with a distinct musicality that differentiates its sound from the prosodical patterns of Spanish (which tends to stress the second-to-last syllable). Some Euskaldun berriak ("new Basque-speakers", i.e. second-language Basque-speakers) with Spanish as their first language tend to carry the prosodical patterns of Spanish into their pronunciation of Basque, e.g. pronouncing nire ama ("my mum") as nire áma (– – ´ –), instead of as niré amà (– ´ – `). Morphophonology The combining forms of nominals in final vary across the regions of the Basque Country. The can stay unchanged, be lowered to an , or it can be lost. Loss is most common in the east, while lowering is most common in the west. For instance, buru, "head", has the combining forms buru-'' and ''bur-'', as in ''buruko, "cap", and burko, "pillow", whereas katu, "cat", has the combining form kata-'', as in ''katakume, "kitten". Michelena suggests that the lowering to is generalised from cases of Romance borrowings in Basque that retained Romance stem alternations, such as kantu, "song" with combining form kanta-'', borrowed from Romance ''canto, ''canta-''. References External links * Category:Language phonologies